Within the field of computing, many scenarios involve a presentation of an application by a device having at least two presentation components. As a first such example, a device may comprise two or more displays, and may present a computing environment across the two or more displays. As a second such example, a display may comprise a display and a pair of headphones, and may present the application visually upon the display and/or audially through the headphones. As a third such example, a device may have access to remote display components of one or more other devices, such as remote terminal sessions, projectors, or sets of remote speakers, and may transmit the application presentation to one or more of the remote display components for presentation.
The manner of choosing a presentation component upon which to present an application is often delegated to the user. As a first such example, among several displays that are accessible to a device, a user of a visual application may specify a selected display (e.g., moving a window to a specific display), and the device may display the application on the selected display. As a second such example, a user may request to play music, and the device may present a list of audio devices that are accessible to the device and are capable of rendering the music for the user. The user may then select an audio device, and the device may play the music through the selected audio device.
Additionally, many such devices maintain a history of applications that have been presented within the computing environment of the device. For example, an application switcher or “Alt-Tab” list may indicate the set of recently presented applications, optionally including an application presentation order, in which the applications have been presented to and/or activated by the user (e.g., a current application and a previous application). Upon receiving a request to transition from a current application to a second application (such as a “next” application in the application order), the device may transition the computing environment to the second application (e.g., raising the “Z-order” of a window for the application in a window stack presented on a display of the device, in order to present the second application in the foreground of the computing environment).